7 ms·

Why We Choose Liars as Leaders

43 points by rustoo 3y ago

Guthur 3y ago
We don't choose anything. I voted once over 20 years ago. But even if you do play the voting game it probably averages out that half time you're not getting who you vote for and the the other half of the time you're not getting what you voted for. You have a few individuals and families that have a complete strangle hold via assets they're never taxed on and can borrow huge amounts of cash against. "We" simply can not compete on an even playing field. Voting is a house always wins game.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  Oh you better not be slanderin' my heckin' democracy!
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Truth is a defense against slander in the US. ;)
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      Slander is spoken defamation, and defamation is by definition untrue statements. So Truth isn't really a defense against a slander allegation; it's a refutation of that allegation. If the spoken words are true, they can't be defamatory, so they can't be slander.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        I don't know the fine, legal distinction between a refutation and a defense, but it seems like they're quite close. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20is%20widely%20accepted%20as,all%20defamation%20claims https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20i....
        denton-scratch 3y ago
        You can refute a statement or proposition (which might be an allegation of wrongdoing). You can mount a defense without refuting any allegation; for example, it's usually a defense to any allegation to say that "It wasn't me", without claiming that the event didn't happen. In the UK, it's usually a defense to say that the act was justified, even if it happened and you did it. I think it's usually a defense to claim that you had no choice. I suppose my persnickety comment was to the effect that if the claim is true, then there was no slander; you aren't innocent or guilty, because the alleged act simply didn't happen.
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  Well, but look at this from this angle: now those individuals and families have more or less peaceful power-transfer game to play (which also brings some marginal improvements in life quality to you and me in the process) instead of, you know, civil wars and political assassinations.
  - landemva 3y ago
    USA had that until a former President was indicted to rabid cheering. Even Nixon was pardoned. Peaceful power transition may have ended.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Not voting is also a choice, however it means you leave the results over to a vocal minority; remember that there were only 537 votes difference in Florida between Bush and Gore in 2000; that's a tiny margin, which could easily have gone the other way (and with it pretty much everything that happened after 9/11) if only the people that were like "I'm not voting because the system is broken" had actually gone and voted. I mean the system IS broken, but choosing not to participate doesn't help. If you do want to protest, vote blank. If you don't vote, you're participating in the idea that democracy doesn't work and should be replaced with a different system. Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the least worst. The US-flavored democracy is broken but needs the right people to get voted in to change it.
  - jrs235 3y ago
    I wish every ballot had for every office or position, the option to choose no confidence in any of the ballot choices. Then we could not only see who got the most votes we could see how many people have no confidence in any of the options or candidates. And hopefully if too large of a portion chose no confidence then we get a redo in a month with different candidates. Or something like that.
    - joshjje 3y ago
      Add along with that ranked choice voting of some sort. Of course, they'll never allow this as then they couldn't have third party candidates to siphon off votes off of the opposing party's nominee.
      - landemva 3y ago
        You may want to research your State election law for major/minor party. That is how the two party system in USA is perpetuated. Of course the Ds and Rs, and TV, will not tell you about it.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > I wish every ballot had for every office or position, the option to choose no confidence in any of the ballot choices. If you factor in eligible non-voters, then "neither Democrat nor Republican" wins almost every election in the US. For example, Biden got 51.3% of the vote with 66.6% turnout, which is only 34% of eligible voters. Now ask yourself how many of those 34% were truly enthusiastic about Biden, and how many were just voting against Trump.
- sebastianconcpt 3y ago
  It is but history shows that all the alternatives to that game are horribly worst.
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    Well, what about the ancient Greek version of "democracy" where magistrates were appointed by a uniform random choice? That would also improve diversity of the public officials, you know? As opposed to that Roman "republic" thing that had magistrates elected by majority voting.
    - sebastianconcpt 3y ago
      It starts to make sense really. The thing is that humanity needs to figure out what's the system that optimizes freedom and well being for most at the same time that keep psychopaths and evil players at bay (under 2% and out of power or controlling positions). Scalable to multi-culture 7 billion individuals.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  That’s democracy you don’t get what you want because you are not the only citizen, you vote for your interests so that they are represented when discussing. Seems childish “I don’t get what I want so I don’t play at all” no? There are some people who oppose corporate welfare for example to say one of the point you made
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    > I don’t get what I want so I don’t play at all” no It’s not “I don’t get what I want so I don’t play” it’s “The outcome doesn’t change if I play or don’t, so I’ll just live my life and do something else”. I can tell you exactly which party is going to win local elections near me, and in many cases which candidate because I know the demographics and general zeitgeist of the area. If I’m part of that zeitgeist, it doesn’t matter if I vote or note because I get the outcome I want either way. If I’m not, then it also doesn’t matter because no action by me is going to magically change anything. In national election, I have no interest in picking between thing 1 and thing 2, they’ll both fuck me over anyway, perhaps in different way. Maybe if you live in a highly contested swing state or area it’s worth it to vote.
- landemva 3y ago
  I have found that voting on local city and county does have impact. And leaving the federal races unvoted shows my choice of none of the above.
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    Did you have actually have a local election decided by one vote? If not then your vote didn’t change the outcome
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - meragrin_ 3y ago
    Not me. It's usually vote for the person on the ballot or not at all. Either way, the person wins and could not care less what my stance is. In the rare instances there is a choice, the ordained person usually wins. In the even rarer case the non-ordained person wins, they flip and carry on the status quo they claimed to be fighting.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  "I never vote - don't vote" is a dysfunctional world view.
- myko 3y ago
  > We don't choose anything. I voted once over 20 years ago. Black folks who now don't have to sit in the back of the bus and gay folks who are now allowed to be married would likely disagree with you.
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    Wasn’t gay marriage primarily driven by courts?
    - casefields 3y ago
      Yes. California voted down gay marriage with Prop 8 in 2008.
    - myko 3y ago
      Who determines who is on the courts? It all comes back to voting.
roenxi 3y ago
It is bizarre, beyond bizarre, that these people keep focusing in on Trump's flamboyant habit of lying. His opponents lied. Everyone in politics lies. Why there is this expectation that people will stop supporting Trump because he lies is beyond a mystery. Are Huppert and Levine proposing that they vote for honest politicians? Where are they supposed to find them? Your options are to vote for politicians who never say anything of substance, or vote for people who are habitual liars. I'm glad we're realistic about Trump telling lies, but please can we also focus on the lies like the claims there was no spying apparatus, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that the US economy was strong going in to all the major recessions? The difference between Trump and that is that Trump's lies didn't end up having much in the way of consequences.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Well, at least Nixon had some consequences. I feel like, in the past the liars at least tried to delay the exposure of the lie. And “plausible deniability” came from that environment. Trump implemented a new tactic of “carpet bombing” of lies. I don’t know which is worse for society, really, but it’s different. Maybe one paved the ground for the other.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Trump is worse. It's one thing to lie, and try desperately to cover up the lie and not get caught. It's much worse to lie so blatantly and frequently that people give up even trying to expose and refute all your lies. It's worse because it's more corrosive to the moral fiber (and even sanity) of the population. It is not healthy to continually bathe in lies. You can lose track of reality.
- fabian2k 3y ago
  There is still a very large and fundamental difference between the kind of election promise breaking you expect from most politicians and what Trump did. He was constantly lying about everything and denying reality. That is not how all politicians behave.
trabant00 3y ago
This is a political piece thinly veiled as psychology article. I know most people upvote this kind of stories just based on the title and use that as a conversation starter. But we are helping to rank cheap propaganda and I think that is a shame.
- vintagedave 3y ago
  Is it? I read the article specifically because of this comment, and I don't see what you claim. I do see recent American political history used as an example (Trump, extensively), but it also uses a cheating sports team, as well as briefly Clinton too. Noting Trump as a habitual liar is not contentious, and so it's not propaganda at all. For those who support Trump, as reading between the lines you might (? this is an interpretation of your claim it is 'cheap propaganda' and 'thinly veiled as psychology') it would be disingenuous to claim he doesn't and didn't lie (I note you did not say this, btw); the thing is that _he's supported even though he does lie._ And that's exactly the phenomenon this article is about.
  - trabant00 3y ago
    I do not support Trump, I am not even from the US. My standards for the president of the no 1 military and economic world power are a lot higher than Trump. Do you see though how instead of talking about the psychology of choosing leaders we are talking about Trump? This is what I do not like.
    - thereisnojesus 3y ago
      Sucks to be you. You can also drive a conversation elsewhere. You are apart of the conversation too. You aren't a victim. You can chose how to interact with humans.
mindslight 3y ago
This article misses the mark terribly. "Zero sum" thinking has some explanatory power for why people line up behind a chosen leader, but it doesn't explain why they choose that leader in the first place. To me, the reason most people choose liars as leaders is because they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths. Decisions aren't driven by self interest of material benefit, but rather the ego boost of what makes them feel smart/superior/etc. This also applies to nuance that would make people think, which is why for every political topic in the US, the mainstream opinions are invariably based around some ignorant groupthink. Looking at the US political process with the standard narrative of "people make decisions and leaders carry them out", it's surprising that anything useful comes out of it at all. I'd say the halfway-useful results have more to do with politicians actually working for entrenched business interests, with the main mechanism of elections being to make people think they asked for the results. Of course, that is a horrible dynamic if you actually desire freedom.
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  > they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths I think it goes farther than this. They choose liars because liars are supernormal stimuli for the body politic. If their lies are too obvious, they may be rejected, but most liars appear as better candidates than an ideologically similar candidate bound by truth.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    > They choose liars because liars are supernormal stimuli for the body politic That might be a better way of describing it, at least for some things. Things that people want to be stimulated about, as opposed to things they want to ignore.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  > To me, the reason most people choose liars as leaders is because they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths. I think you hit the nail on the head there, and probably explains the belief in gods and how religions also exploit it. A sort of psychotherapy session for the community, if you want to believe in that.
avgcorrection 3y ago
Run of the mill victim-blaming and psycholigizing. Most so-called leaders are not picked by the everyman but by powerful people, like lesser leaders or people who need frontwomen/frontmen. Then some times (like the US presidential elections) the everyman gets to pick among a few (like two) of them after having been filtered down mostly by those more powerful people. The duopoly of the US[1] has been moving to the right for decades. Which might not be obvious since the Republicans are so good at being extremists that one can be fooled into thinking that the Democrats are a left-wing party, even though they’re a business-aligned, right-wing party with some nice-on-social-issues tendencies. I guess the decades of having to choose between not-that-different candidates might push some people towards a “left field” candidate. And in 2016 the more reactionary petite bourgeoisie managed to boost Donald Trump into snatching a victory (somewhat barely). But there was also the other left field candidate Bernie Sanders, who was not a notorious liar but was still popular. But tellingly the Establishment would rather let a terrible right-wing buffoon win rather than a social democrat, so Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump was a given since the Democratic Primaries started. [1] Disclaimer: not an American.
sedawk 3y ago
[dead]

43 points by rustoo 3y ago

We don't choose anything. I voted once over 20 years ago. But even if you do play the voting game it probably averages out that half time you're not getting who you vote for and the the other half of the time you're not getting what you voted for. You have a few individuals and families that have a complete strangle hold via assets they're never taxed on and can borrow huge amounts of cash against. "We" simply can not compete on an even playing field. Voting is a house always wins game.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Oh you better not be slanderin' my heckin' democracy!
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Truth is a defense against slander in the US. ;)
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    Slander is spoken defamation, and defamation is by definition untrue statements. So Truth isn't really a defense against a slander allegation; it's a refutation of that allegation. If the spoken words are true, they can't be defamatory, so they can't be slander.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      I don't know the fine, legal distinction between a refutation and a defense, but it seems like they're quite close. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20is%20widely%20accepted%20as,all%20defamation%20claims https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation#:~:text=Truth%20i....
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        You can refute a statement or proposition (which might be an allegation of wrongdoing). You can mount a defense without refuting any allegation; for example, it's usually a defense to any allegation to say that "It wasn't me", without claiming that the event didn't happen. In the UK, it's usually a defense to say that the act was justified, even if it happened and you did it. I think it's usually a defense to claim that you had no choice. I suppose my persnickety comment was to the effect that if the claim is true, then there was no slander; you aren't innocent or guilty, because the alleged act simply didn't happen.
Joker_vD 3y ago
Well, but look at this from this angle: now those individuals and families have more or less peaceful power-transfer game to play (which also brings some marginal improvements in life quality to you and me in the process) instead of, you know, civil wars and political assassinations.
- landemva 3y ago
  USA had that until a former President was indicted to rabid cheering. Even Nixon was pardoned. Peaceful power transition may have ended.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Not voting is also a choice, however it means you leave the results over to a vocal minority; remember that there were only 537 votes difference in Florida between Bush and Gore in 2000; that's a tiny margin, which could easily have gone the other way (and with it pretty much everything that happened after 9/11) if only the people that were like "I'm not voting because the system is broken" had actually gone and voted. I mean the system IS broken, but choosing not to participate doesn't help. If you do want to protest, vote blank. If you don't vote, you're participating in the idea that democracy doesn't work and should be replaced with a different system. Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the least worst. The US-flavored democracy is broken but needs the right people to get voted in to change it.
- jrs235 3y ago
  I wish every ballot had for every office or position, the option to choose no confidence in any of the ballot choices. Then we could not only see who got the most votes we could see how many people have no confidence in any of the options or candidates. And hopefully if too large of a portion chose no confidence then we get a redo in a month with different candidates. Or something like that.
  - joshjje 3y ago
    Add along with that ranked choice voting of some sort. Of course, they'll never allow this as then they couldn't have third party candidates to siphon off votes off of the opposing party's nominee.
    - landemva 3y ago
      You may want to research your State election law for major/minor party. That is how the two party system in USA is perpetuated. Of course the Ds and Rs, and TV, will not tell you about it.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > I wish every ballot had for every office or position, the option to choose no confidence in any of the ballot choices. If you factor in eligible non-voters, then "neither Democrat nor Republican" wins almost every election in the US. For example, Biden got 51.3% of the vote with 66.6% turnout, which is only 34% of eligible voters. Now ask yourself how many of those 34% were truly enthusiastic about Biden, and how many were just voting against Trump.
sebastianconcpt 3y ago
It is but history shows that all the alternatives to that game are horribly worst.
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  Well, what about the ancient Greek version of "democracy" where magistrates were appointed by a uniform random choice? That would also improve diversity of the public officials, you know? As opposed to that Roman "republic" thing that had magistrates elected by majority voting.
  - sebastianconcpt 3y ago
    It starts to make sense really. The thing is that humanity needs to figure out what's the system that optimizes freedom and well being for most at the same time that keep psychopaths and evil players at bay (under 2% and out of power or controlling positions). Scalable to multi-culture 7 billion individuals.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
That’s democracy you don’t get what you want because you are not the only citizen, you vote for your interests so that they are represented when discussing. Seems childish “I don’t get what I want so I don’t play at all” no? There are some people who oppose corporate welfare for example to say one of the point you made
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > I don’t get what I want so I don’t play at all” no It’s not “I don’t get what I want so I don’t play” it’s “The outcome doesn’t change if I play or don’t, so I’ll just live my life and do something else”. I can tell you exactly which party is going to win local elections near me, and in many cases which candidate because I know the demographics and general zeitgeist of the area. If I’m part of that zeitgeist, it doesn’t matter if I vote or note because I get the outcome I want either way. If I’m not, then it also doesn’t matter because no action by me is going to magically change anything. In national election, I have no interest in picking between thing 1 and thing 2, they’ll both fuck me over anyway, perhaps in different way. Maybe if you live in a highly contested swing state or area it’s worth it to vote.
landemva 3y ago
I have found that voting on local city and county does have impact. And leaving the federal races unvoted shows my choice of none of the above.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Did you have actually have a local election decided by one vote? If not then your vote didn’t change the outcome
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- meragrin_ 3y ago
  Not me. It's usually vote for the person on the ballot or not at all. Either way, the person wins and could not care less what my stance is. In the rare instances there is a choice, the ordained person usually wins. In the even rarer case the non-ordained person wins, they flip and carry on the status quo they claimed to be fighting.
mistrial9 3y ago
"I never vote - don't vote" is a dysfunctional world view.
myko 3y ago
> We don't choose anything. I voted once over 20 years ago. Black folks who now don't have to sit in the back of the bus and gay folks who are now allowed to be married would likely disagree with you.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Wasn’t gay marriage primarily driven by courts?
  - casefields 3y ago
    Yes. California voted down gay marriage with Prop 8 in 2008.
  - myko 3y ago
    Who determines who is on the courts? It all comes back to voting.

roenxi 3y ago

It is bizarre, beyond bizarre, that these people keep focusing in on Trump's flamboyant habit of lying. His opponents lied. Everyone in politics lies. Why there is this expectation that people will stop supporting Trump because he lies is beyond a mystery. Are Huppert and Levine proposing that they vote for honest politicians? Where are they supposed to find them? Your options are to vote for politicians who never say anything of substance, or vote for people who are habitual liars. I'm glad we're realistic about Trump telling lies, but please can we also focus on the lies like the claims there was no spying apparatus, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that the US economy was strong going in to all the major recessions? The difference between Trump and that is that Trump's lies didn't end up having much in the way of consequences.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Well, at least Nixon had some consequences. I feel like, in the past the liars at least tried to delay the exposure of the lie. And “plausible deniability” came from that environment. Trump implemented a new tactic of “carpet bombing” of lies. I don’t know which is worse for society, really, but it’s different. Maybe one paved the ground for the other.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Trump is worse. It's one thing to lie, and try desperately to cover up the lie and not get caught. It's much worse to lie so blatantly and frequently that people give up even trying to expose and refute all your lies. It's worse because it's more corrosive to the moral fiber (and even sanity) of the population. It is not healthy to continually bathe in lies. You can lose track of reality.
fabian2k 3y ago
There is still a very large and fundamental difference between the kind of election promise breaking you expect from most politicians and what Trump did. He was constantly lying about everything and denying reality. That is not how all politicians behave.

trabant00 3y ago

This is a political piece thinly veiled as psychology article. I know most people upvote this kind of stories just based on the title and use that as a conversation starter. But we are helping to rank cheap propaganda and I think that is a shame.

vintagedave 3y ago
Is it? I read the article specifically because of this comment, and I don't see what you claim. I do see recent American political history used as an example (Trump, extensively), but it also uses a cheating sports team, as well as briefly Clinton too. Noting Trump as a habitual liar is not contentious, and so it's not propaganda at all. For those who support Trump, as reading between the lines you might (? this is an interpretation of your claim it is 'cheap propaganda' and 'thinly veiled as psychology') it would be disingenuous to claim he doesn't and didn't lie (I note you did not say this, btw); the thing is that _he's supported even though he does lie._ And that's exactly the phenomenon this article is about.
- trabant00 3y ago
  I do not support Trump, I am not even from the US. My standards for the president of the no 1 military and economic world power are a lot higher than Trump. Do you see though how instead of talking about the psychology of choosing leaders we are talking about Trump? This is what I do not like.
  - thereisnojesus 3y ago
    Sucks to be you. You can also drive a conversation elsewhere. You are apart of the conversation too. You aren't a victim. You can chose how to interact with humans.

mindslight 3y ago

This article misses the mark terribly. "Zero sum" thinking has some explanatory power for why people line up behind a chosen leader, but it doesn't explain why they choose that leader in the first place. To me, the reason most people choose liars as leaders is because they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths. Decisions aren't driven by self interest of material benefit, but rather the ego boost of what makes them feel smart/superior/etc. This also applies to nuance that would make people think, which is why for every political topic in the US, the mainstream opinions are invariably based around some ignorant groupthink. Looking at the US political process with the standard narrative of "people make decisions and leaders carry them out", it's surprising that anything useful comes out of it at all. I'd say the halfway-useful results have more to do with politicians actually working for entrenched business interests, with the main mechanism of elections being to make people think they asked for the results. Of course, that is a horrible dynamic if you actually desire freedom.

BeFlatXIII 3y ago
> they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths I think it goes farther than this. They choose liars because liars are supernormal stimuli for the body politic. If their lies are too obvious, they may be rejected, but most liars appear as better candidates than an ideologically similar candidate bound by truth.
- mindslight 3y ago
  > They choose liars because liars are supernormal stimuli for the body politic That might be a better way of describing it, at least for some things. Things that people want to be stimulated about, as opposed to things they want to ignore.
darkclouds 3y ago
> To me, the reason most people choose liars as leaders is because they prefer comfortable falsehoods to hard truths. I think you hit the nail on the head there, and probably explains the belief in gods and how religions also exploit it. A sort of psychotherapy session for the community, if you want to believe in that.

avgcorrection 3y ago

Run of the mill victim-blaming and psycholigizing. Most so-called leaders are not picked by the everyman but by powerful people, like lesser leaders or people who need frontwomen/frontmen. Then some times (like the US presidential elections) the everyman gets to pick among a few (like two) of them after having been filtered down mostly by those more powerful people. The duopoly of the US[1] has been moving to the right for decades. Which might not be obvious since the Republicans are so good at being extremists that one can be fooled into thinking that the Democrats are a left-wing party, even though they’re a business-aligned, right-wing party with some nice-on-social-issues tendencies. I guess the decades of having to choose between not-that-different candidates might push some people towards a “left field” candidate. And in 2016 the more reactionary petite bourgeoisie managed to boost Donald Trump into snatching a victory (somewhat barely). But there was also the other left field candidate Bernie Sanders, who was not a notorious liar but was still popular. But tellingly the Establishment would rather let a terrible right-wing buffoon win rather than a social democrat, so Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump was a given since the Democratic Primaries started. [1] Disclaimer: not an American.

sedawk 3y ago

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